"Mike, what's our status?" Evelyn Lane's voice was calm, almost too calm for the tension buzzing in the Everstream open floor.
Mike Hanlon rubbed his forehead. "Logan's got some hacking chops, but…"
Logan, the lanky programmer sitting two seats over, gave a sheepish shrug. "Evelyn, this isn't your run-of-the-mill ransomware. Whoever's behind this planned it for weeks—maybe months. They're way out of our league."
Charlotte Quinn kept her head down, quietly tapping away. She had a partial lead, but by her own estimate, she'd need at least half a day to clean the infection across the company. The hackers had given them twenty minutes. It was impossible.
Evelyn pulled out her phone. "Claire, I need you."
Her old college roommate in Boston had taught her most of her own hacking skills. Evelyn laid out the situation quickly.
"Ev, if you gave me two hours, maybe. But twenty minutes? No way. Pay them. Hackers at this level always deliver on their threats. And for God's sake, upgrade your security afterward."
"Got it. Thanks."
She hung up, her jaw tight. "Looks like we pay up. And after this, we double our network security budget."
Before she could make the call, Claire from operations jogged in, pale-faced. "You need to see this. The attack's already all over LinkedIn and the local tech blogs."
Evelyn scanned the feed. Her stomach sank. Hackers leaked stories only if they weren't getting paid—or didn't care about payment. This wasn't just about money.
"They want to wreck Everstream," she muttered.
Now the problem was doubled—pay, and they'd look weak. Refuse, and they'd lose data and credibility.
Her phone buzzed. She recognized the caller: one of their biggest clients.
"Evelyn, saw the headlines," said David Holt, CEO of Synercom. "If you pay, that's bad for our brand. If you can't contain this, we can't risk the PR hit. Our partnership ends."
Evelyn forced a steady voice. "We'll handle it."
When she hung up, she knew she had maybe half an hour to save the company and a multi-million-dollar contract. Other department heads were fielding similar calls from clients, their faces drawn tight.
Then—
"Got it!" Mike shouted. "Someone just dropped an antivirus tool on a deep-web forum I follow. Logan tested it—it works. Wipes the ransomware clean."
The engineering team swarmed into action, loading the fix onto every workstation. Within minutes, every machine in Everstream was clean, the firewall patched.
Evelyn crossed her arms. "Where did that come from?"
Logan grinned. "Some anonymous user in a black-hat forum. No idea why they'd post it for free."
Ryan, at his desk across the room, didn't look up. He simply closed his terminal, a faint smirk tugging at his mouth.
Two miles away — Apex Innovations HQ
"Hah! Nicely done, boys," laughed Richard Salen, CEO of Apex. "Everstream's gonna bleed over this one. Worth every penny."
James and Jack—two contracted "consultants" from overseas—stood by.
"It's been over twenty minutes. If they haven't paid yet, do we dump the data now?" James asked.
Richard was about to answer when his monitor flickered—then went black.
"What the hell—"
Jack yanked a flash drive from his pocket to pull their stolen files, but found it already wiped. James tried rebooting, only to find the OS corrupted beyond repair.
Richard's secretary burst in. "Sir, every workstation in the building just went down. Completely bricked."
Jack's voice was flat. "We've been hacked."
James scowled. "And whoever it is—" he glanced at the antivirus code now overwriting their systems "—just beat us with our own tools… upgraded."
Richard slumped into his chair. "They knew it was us."
Neither consultant met his eyes. "Even if we had a month, we couldn't write something to break this," Jack admitted. "They're better than us."
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